I received the following announcement in my inbox today, and felt the content would be of interest to readers of this blog even if they have no intention of attending the meeting or submiting a proposal.  For more information, go here.

We are pleased to announce the 2014 Midyear Meeting Workshop
on Blurring Boundaries in Financial and Corporate Law, June 7-9, 2014 in
Washington, D.C….

We invite you to submit a proposal to participate in this
two-day program, which is designed to explore the various ways in which the
lines separating distinct, identifiable areas of theory, policy, and doctrine
in business law have begun to break down….. Proposals are due October 25, 2013,
by e-mail, to 14blurringboundaries@aals.org.

Why Attend this Workshop? 

Understanding how capital is formed and transformed in
today's economy and how financial risk is spread requires that scholars and
students understand financial and corporate law and the theory and policy
underlying the doctrine.  If scholars
work solely within the traditional boundaries of any single field in the
financial and corporate law spectrum, they risk having a parochial view of
vital legal questions.  Indeed, each area
of financial and corporate law faces a broader set of questions than it has
historically engaged.   Securities
regulation covers much more than initial public offerings.  The regulation of financial institutions can
no longer concern itself primarily with deposit-taking banks (indeed, the label
"banking law" seems now outdated). 
Insurance regulation is no longer entrusted exclusively to state
regulators, and those regulators can no longer ignore systemic risks or the
modernization of consumer products and consumer protection strategies.  Business associations involve more than
publicly traded corporations.  These are
but a few examples….

Many critical legal questions and challenges engage more
than one field of financial and corporate law. 
Certain topics arise in more than one area of substantive law.  There has been explosive growth in hybrid
entities and financial instruments.  This
dynamic and others have exposed tensions between the benefits of financial
innovation, on the one hand, and increased complexity and the potential for
regulatory arbitrage, on the other.  As
the complexity of legal entities and financial products and markets increases,
financial and corporate law have refocused on the need for and means of better
protecting consumers, shareholders, and other stakeholders.  New financial intermediaries are entering
markets at the same time that technology enables radical
"disintermediation."  Numerous
other factors also play a role in the legal puzzle across the regulatory
continuum, among them, globalization, the Internet, and the rise of
institutional investors in financial markets. 
Financial and corporate regulation can and do take both conceptually
similar and radically different approaches to these and other related matters.

The very nature of regulation is at issue, and that topic
has received and deserves significant attention in law scholarship and law
teaching.  The task of designing
effective regulation that curtails moral hazard and mitigates systemic risk is
a major challenge.  The efficacy of
disclosure, corporate governance rules, and other traditional regulatory tools
is an important area for discussion.  But
larger regulatory issues loom. 
Individual systems of substantive regulation may take converging or
diverging paths to protect consumers/investors, regulate market conduct, and
design prudential regulation. The allocation of regulatory responsibilities
among various agencies and courts and across multiple jurisdictions-domestic
and international-raise issues in and well beyond the scope of traditional
legal scholarship and law teaching.  We
are in an era, for example, in which many are actively re-thinking the
institutional design of regulators and regulation to address not only economic
risks but also the threat of "capture" and other political dynamics….